Tea and Mildly Happy Endings
by limegreenwordmachine
Summary: "There. Happy ending."  "What's keeping you from yours?" Well, there's a loaded question.


**Hi! I'm Limegreen, and this is my first story for A:TLA. Previously, I've only written for the Sisters Grimm and Leviathan categories. I wrote for Harry Potter once, but I ended up deleting that. After rewatching the cartoon for the first time since I was nine or ten, I became completely addicted. Mai and Toph are my two favorite female characters, and this just started stewing. I did my best to keep both Mai and Toph in character and to keep it moving without growing slow and boring. It's been about two months in the making, but I'm proud to say it's ready to be seen. **

Mai's tea burns hot and sweet running down her throat. It scorches her taste buds, and inevitably her tongue will have that strange numb feeling for a couple of hours if she doesn't wait a few minutes to sip it again.

The small Fire Nation tea shop is no Jasmine Dragon, but it's satisfactory. It's full of bustle, laughter, and dim lamplight.

Mai hates dim, bustling places. Predictably, she's bored.

The door opens abruptly and closes with a slam that's cushioned by the din. Standing at the entrance is the little earthbending girl – Toph. She storms to the counter, little bare feet pounding on the floor, and orders "the biggest cup of chamomile you have." She tosses onto the counter a couple of coins and plops down in a seat with her cup, brow furrowed, blowing her bangs up out of her sightless eyes. Tears well up in the corners, only visible to the observant.

Mai has never exchanged more than a few cursory words with the young earthbender, but one thing she's noticed is that the girl bites back her weaknesses. Mai's been there. She's done that.

She experiences an unexpected burst of sympathy for the girl.

Should she…?

Maybe. But…

Whatever.

"Toph?"

"What?" The girl hastily swats away a tear from her cheek, taps a toe to the ground in search of recognition. She finds the slim, still figure of Mai. The tension in her neck subsides, but not by much. "Oh. Mai."

"Come sit here." Mai motions to the seat across the table. She expected more reluctance, but Toph complies, cradling her tea. "What's eating you?"

"I'm fine." She feigns annoyance, and it's not unconvincing, but the older girl can spot the cracks.

"I've bottled things up before, too. You don't have to tell me."

Toph cocks an eyebrow. "Why do you care, anyway?"

Mai shrugs. "You walked in and everything about the way you walked and talked was off."

The other girl gulps down tea. "It's complicated," she admits.

"Oh. Boy trouble."

"I never said that!"

"You didn't have to." One long sip of tea, taken quietly and delicately. "I've been there."

"You? You're engaged to the fire lord."

"The oblivious, clueless, brooding teenage fire lord. It was not an easy road." Mai rolls her eyes and drains half of her mug in one gulp. Warmth pools in her stomach.

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Toph looks at her lap, picks with incredible focus at a dirty fingernail, and her lips go pale from pressing together in contemplation. "Did you…did you ever think Zuko didn't love you back?"

Mai comes close to snorting, but that would be un-Mai-like. "Are you kidding? Until I was eleven I'm pretty sure he didn't know I existed, and he only ever found out because Azula put a burning apple on my head to get him to dive on top of me into a pond. Then there was the time he broke up with me by leaving a _note _while he went off to hang with the Avatar and his band of runaways. That's enough to make you question anyone's intentions."

Toph cracks a grin, but it fades quickly. "That's different though. He figured it out eventually and now you're going to marry him. Happy ending."

"What's keeping you from yours?"

Toph takes a deep breath and unintelligibly mutters something, clearly evading the question.

"I completely understand," Mai says sarcastically.

Toph glares. "He's three years older than I am and thinks of me as a little sister."

If she was a woman of facial expressions, Mai would wince. "That's…tough."

"Thank you, O Lady Most Eloquent. You know, I'm beginning to think more and more that you and Zuko are a perfect match. He has a gift for empathy too." Her words drip with sarcasm.

"It's that water tribe boy, Sokka, isn't it?" The gears in Mai's mind turn quickly, but her voice remains even and low. "Ty Lee used to think he was cute."

"Not that I would know." Toph chuckles darkly. "Yeah, that's the one. He's klutzy and crazy and a complete sarcastic _nut._" She looks wistful. "But he's smart and sweet and he'd do anything for somebody he loves."

"I know," Mai nods. "Zuko's an idiot sometimes, but he's brave and goodhearted." Mai forgets that Toph can feel her heart speed up slightly at the praise of her fiancé. She forgets how much the blind girl can detect about a person who betrays nothing.

"I'm in love with him."

"I know." Mai nods slowly.

"But he's…getting married in four months."

"I know."

"To Suki."

"I know." Mai feels a twinge of pity for the poor fifteen-year-old sitting across the table.

"And there'll be flowers and smiles and I'll have to pretend I'm happy, too, and really it's just gonna suck. It'll hurt."

"Probably."

"And on top of that, Suki's nice! She saved my life! I can't even hate her for it, because she really does love him, and it's just…it's all a big mess, you know?"

"I know."

"And usually, I talk to him when I'm upset, and he always has something great to say, but I can't tell him all about how much I _loooooooooove _him and don't want him to get married, now can I? Because he actually _wants _this and I don't have the right to ruin it for him!" Toph slams her empty cup down on the table, drawing the attention of fellow customers from all directions.

"Mind your own business," Mai smoothly admonishes the spectators. "And Toph…I know it hurts. When Zuko broke up with me in a stupid letter and then set off to go teach a twelve-year-old monk how to throw fire around, I was angry and hurt. Because no matter what I did, what came first to him was 'finding his path,' and at first I didn't get that. But after a while I saw that he did what he needed to do, and he figured out that he'd been wrong to do that to me. He came around and I came around. Some things need time."

"But Sokka's not going to come around."

"Maybe not. Maybe you're the one that has to come around in this situation. I think you're just going to have to be glad for him and Suki and stay his friend, and just be there. And then maybe it'll get easier over time and you'll be able to move on."

"You're probably right," Toph said quietly. "But I don't want to."

"I know." Mai can't quite understand why she does what she does next. It's just so contradictory of everything she is. She reaches over the tiny table and awkwardly pats Toph's shoulder.

"I can't believe I'm telling you all this, Ice."

"What?"

"It's my new nickname for you. Because you're all cold on the outside, but when you warm up to people you melt a little bit."

"Oh. That's..cool, I guess." And coming from Mai, that means it's actually pretty cool. She'll never say it aloud, but she feels a prick of pride that, in Toph's eyes, she's worth being nicknamed.

"But, you know, like I was saying. I usually don't tell anybody this stuff. You didn't slip anything in my tea, did you?" She chuckles. Of course not. She would have known.

"Well, no. I usually don't say that many words in a row, either."

"You're not so bad, Icy."

"You're not so bad yourself." The corners of Mai's mouth quirk up into an almost imperceptible smile. Almost undetectable, but there nonetheless.

"Thanks, Mai." Toph rubs her eyes one last time and cracks her signature confident grin.

"Anytime." She finds herself meaning it.

**Thank you for reading! Please leave an honest review.**


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